Driving interoperability

Supporting an open, collaborative environment that puts the patient first.

Sharing data is the foundation of patient-centric interoperability at Cerner

We’re focused on supporting safe, connected and informed patient care. We believe that patient data should flow freely, and securely, between care providers across the health and care ecosystem. Interoperability is, and always has been, at the core of what we do, which is why we have driven the creation and uptake of industry standards.

Advancing interoperability in the UK

We are leading the healthcare industry forwards by promoting standards and guidance that support open and interoperable approaches. Cerner was one of the first signatories of techUK’s Health and Social Care Interoperability Charter, we co-founded the UK’s INTEROpen interoperability industry group while championing FHIR® in the UK, and we’ve been a long-time supporter of the Professional Records Standards Body, as well as its predecessor in the Royal College of Physicians.

Setting the standards worldwide

Cerner has been active in promoting interoperability worldwide. In 2013, we co-founded the CommonWell Health Alliance to engage the healthcare industry, and we were a founding organisation of the Argonaut Project, working with HL7 to establish the FHIR interoperability standards to speed up market adoption. We also helped lead the Direct Project in the US, which creates standards and documentation for exchanging secure messages.

Health Information Exchange

Our commitment to interoperability has been demonstrated over many years in the UK with the adoption of our Health Information Exchange (HIE), which enables our clients to securely view and exchange patient data, regardless of whether it’s in our EHR or not. Importantly for our clients, our HIE is embedded for clinicians’ use in their own EHR through a contextual link to several leading UK healthcare supplier solutions, including EMIS, TPP, INPS, RiO, and others, with additional suppliers and solutions being constantly added.

Cerner is proud to have signed techUK’s Health and Social Care Interoperability Charter

At Cerner, we firmly support techUK’s interoperability charter and the principles contained therein. We believe that in order to deliver real integrated health and care, it should be a fundamental patient right that their data can flow to the appropriate place where it is needed for health or care regardless of provider or venue.

“Being able to demonstrate that their tools are being developed toward interoperability and that they can facilitate it has been an important part of Cerner and the relationship with their clients.”— Mitzi Cardenas, senior vice president and chief information officer, Truman Medical Center

Barts and Homerton link their information exchanges

The HIEs managed by Barts Health NHS Trust and Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have been linked to provide a joined-up information exchange that now includes 183 GP practices, the East London Foundation Trust and three local community services in East London covering Waltham Forest, Newham, Tower Hamlets and City & Hackney CCGs. Together this has created the East London Patient Record.
Out of the over 89,000 patient record requests made from Barts Health and Homerton hospitals in the region over a six-month period, 31 percent of the searches returned data from the other hospital’s linked information exchange, demonstrating the value of joining up across adjacent regions for patient care.
Planning is under way to link up other Cerner HIE instances and other HIE-based solutions across the capital to improve care co-ordination, quality and safety.

FAQs

Cerner plays an active role in the UK helping to establish, promote and adopt standards that improve the interoperability of solutions in the market. Examples of our support include:

We supported the original Clinical Records Standards work of the Royal College of Physicians and since this work has transitioned to the Professional Record Standard Body, Cerner has supported its industry group.

Cerner supports universities in the UK in health informatics. Our staff teach on health informatics MSc courses and at university events. Cerner has a formal partnership with UCL, where we fund a PhD student, as well as providing internships and sponsoring an MSc dissertation prize in UCL’s Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME).

Cerner has an elected member on the techUK trade body, where we have championed standards for interoperability and for data access. Cerner was one of the first signatories of techUK’s Health and Social Care Interoperability Charter.

Building on being a founding partner for Project Argonaut in HL7 for FHIR® standards, Cerner has championed these standards in the UK and we co-founded the UK’s INTEROpen interoperability industry group.